Entertainment
Jordan Banjo’s baby children received vile death threats over Diversity’s Black Lives Matter performance
Jordan Banjo has opened up about the vitriol levelled against him and his family after Diversity’s Black Lives Matter performance on Britain’s Got Talent last year.
The dance troupe, who won the show in 2009, performed a powerful routine after the death of George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter protests around the world.
While they were widely praised, they also faced major backlash. As well as 24,000 Ofcom complaints, they were subject to vile abuse and even death threats.
Jordan has now explained that some of the abuse was even levelled at his children, two-year-old Cassius and one-year-old Mimi.
‘When I’m sat at home and you’re telling me really horrible stuff like “Your kids are so ugly, they should die”, “I hope your kids get caught in a house fire”, it’s crazy stuff, it’s madness — especially since last year when we did that performance on Britain’s Got Talent,’ he said.
The 28-year-old added to the British Entrepreneur podcast: ‘We did a performance as a summary of 2020. There was a section in there about Black Lives Matter. From then, it was like a red rag to a bull.
‘You had a lot of people who had a genuine grievance with it and then you had some people, where it was like, this whole s**t storm is kicking off, people who try and antagonise you creep out as well. I’m talking literally thousands upon thousands of messages along that level.
‘Even my car’s had cement thrown all over it, my Aston. It was crazy.’
Diversity, led by Jordan’s brother Ashley, performed the controversial routine during the Britain’s Got Talent semi-finals last year.
Despite the backlash, many stars supported the lads, including judges like Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon, who wore a BLM necklace in later shows.
Jordan told Metro.co.uk at the time that the meaning of their performance went beyond Black Lives Matter.
‘Ash (Banjo) came to us and we were speaking about what performance we should do, how we were going to go about it,’ he explained.
‘And this is the thing that gets us the most, no one sat at home had said “you know what we’re doing a Blacks Live Matter performance” we wanted to do a summary of 2020.
‘That was the thing because people missed the point quite a lot. Not even in a negative way.’
He added: ‘I guess you people pick out what they’re passionate about.
‘Everyone’s got Black Lives Matter, but we talked about the NHS carers, we talked about coronavirus, and spreading hope.’
Britain’s Got Talent will return to ITV in 2022.
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